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"(CNN) -- Want to pick up a pack of cigarettes with your prescription refill? A major U.S. pharmacy chain is breaking that habit.

CVS Caremark announced Wednesday it will stop selling cigarettes and other tobacco products at its CVS/pharmacy stores by October 1.

The retailer said the move makes CVS/pharmacy the first chain of national pharmacies to take tobacco products off the shelves.

"Ending the sale of cigarettes and tobacco products at CVS/pharmacy is the right thing for us to do for our customers and our company to help people on their path to better health," Larry J. Merlo, president and CEO of CVS Caremark, said in a statement. "Put simply, the sale of tobacco products is inconsistent with our purpose."

A pharmacy (being a healthcare institution) shouldn't sell cigarettes, alcohol, candy, processed food, nor any of the myriad of products which are harmful.

Problem is, besides drugs and bedpans that pretty much makes up the entire product line of most pharmacies.

Oh please -- you can buy candy and processed food, plus "myriads of products which are harmful" in a hospital and just about any health care institution.Perhaps a history of CVS is in order. Consumer Value Store started in my hometown (still headquartered in Woonsocket) and did NOT have a pharmacy as part of it in the beginning. It was a place to buy stuff cheap. Not sure when the pharmacy became part of it -- but for a long time their signs were CVS / Pharmacy, because not all had them. If I remember correctly, the first CVS store to open a pharmacy was the one across the street from Woonsocket Hospital, now called Landmark Medical Center. Woonsocket Hospital is where I entered this world and is the first job I had out of college -- in their Hematology Lab (but I digress)I commend CVS for taking this stand, but one can take "healthy" expectations of a business too far.

In Canada, the government calls them "nicotine delivery devices" and is working on regulating (read tax) their sale and availability. There are a few stores that sell them exclusively and they are really getting popular here. I see them everywhere now.